


Osmosis

by HannahLydia



Series: Constants and Variables - Vignettes [7]
Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst, Anna may be morphing back into Elizabeth, Awakening, Dad Booker, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, New York, Post-Canon, Regression, Suicidal Thoughts, Taboo, They Remember..., which is creating a heck of a lot of confliction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 02:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15963167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannahLydia/pseuds/HannahLydia
Summary: In New York, the DeWitts are plagued by dreams night after night. Dreams of a fantastical life that feels so real that they almost seem like memories. Booker struggles with an irreparable guilt, and wanders in the hopes of forgetting it.Please heed the tags as this is potentially squicky, but mainly written for theangst.





	Osmosis

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-off and not at all part of the same universe as the rest in my series of vignettes. This was written for Bookerbeth Week '18, for the 'New York' prompt, and is in a similar vein to [Bleeding](http://unstable-reality.tumblr.com/post/101790240578/bleeding) by [unstable-reality](http://unstable-reality.tumblr.com/).  
> 

Booker walks without aim most nights. He’ll step out of his front door, and let his legs take him wherever they feel - down alleys, through parks, into bars and out again. If he wants to feel like his mindless roving has achieved something then he might drop by a few places with advertising boards. Public houses and some tenement buildings usually have them mounted by the door or in the lobby, and he’ll attempt to find a visible spot on the cork board to pin his business card to them. _‘BOOKER DEWITT. INVESTIGATIONS INTO MATTERS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE’._ He can’t afford to get the cards printed, so his details are all handwritten in his sloping hand. At least they’re legible, and  _sometimes_ they get him offers of work.

The smog of pollution is particularly thick tonight. He meanders his way through it, hands deep in his pockets and wondering - not for the first time - what he’s out here searching New York for. It’s streets aren’t always safe at night, but that doesn’t worry him - he can handle a fight. Point in fact, most nights he _longs_ for a fight, just so he can release his unchecked anger on something other than himself.

An easy way out?  
That sounded about right. 

He’s thirty-eight now, and two decades of poverty and drink has hardened him. He’s been a single father for over half his life, and a shit one at that. Anna is rarely ever at home now. She’s become a kind of bored house cat, one without loyalty that eats at every house on the street. Lately it seems as though she’s been adopted by the family that live downstairs. She’d been staying with them for at least the past week, citing that she needed some time to herself. Booker supposed that that was when the dreams had started, because they’d started for _him_ only days before.

Suddenly uncomfortable, Booker pulls out a cigarette and raises it to his lips, lighting it with a match. 

While he’s  _far_ from superstitious and usually only believes in what he can see, he can’t shake the feeling that these dreams are some kind of– of premonition or regression. They’ve been getting to him, smothering him. It’s all he can do to blot them out in the waking hours, but every night is the same. He is somehow terrified of falling asleep should he experience them again, and yet  _desperate_ to all the same. 

It’s a mess. All of it. 

He looks up to find his feet have carried him to the harbour.

Booker takes a long drag on his cigarette and stares into the dark water of the Hudson River. He contemplates taking off his waistcoat, his shirt and cravat and walking out into it until he reaches the sea, allowing the waves to take him away for good.

He hates himself. Sometimes he wonders if Anna feels the same confusion and self-loathing as he does, and if _that’s_ why she’s removed herself from their home and, presumably, his life.  
He hates what these dreams imply.   
He hates that every morning he tries to fall back asleep just to see her look at him that way again.

They were not the kind of things a father or daughter should have been dreaming, even if they’d been innocent enough in the beginning. They were a rescue fantasy of some kind, and though there shouldn’t have been anything remotely ‘wrong’ with that, he can sense, beneath it all, that there is.  
It’s not the contents that are the problem, but the feelings they stir up within him. _Them_. His own child has become a stranger to him, but the girl in his dreams is not, even though she wears her face. She looks at him in a way that Anna never has, and while he could put his finger on it if he tried, he doesn’t dare to. Some lines should not be crossed. 

Booker drinks to forget the conflicting torrent of emotions, in the vain hope that he can poison himself with the alcohol before the distinction between his dreams and reality blur. God, he could really go in for a stiff drink right about now…  

Spotting him, a dockhand clad in overalls whistles at him obnoxiously, waving him away from the water’s edge as if he can read his mind. Perhaps he’s presumed him to be some kind of drunkard or a man lingering with malicious intent. Either way, Booker surrenders. He finishes his cigarette, stubs it out underfoot and retreats with his hands in his pockets.

Despite his need to delay the inevitable longing to fall asleep, he finds himself walking home all the same.

_What’s the point, DeWitt? You know she won’t be there._

_Anna?_

_**Elizabeth**. _

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't ship Booker and Anna at _all_ , for the same reason I can justify shipping Booker and Elizabeth - it's not the blood that matters, so much as the raising, the history, the family connotations. However if 'Elizabeth' were to bleed through so that Anna is no longer herself? The bets are off. One thing's for certain, it makes for some conflicting, taboo angst.


End file.
